Changes in customer behaviour over recent years have accelerated rapidly with the advent of technology such as smartphones, and services such as social media. The rise of these technologies and platforms has created what Experian terms the “always on consumer”, someone who is continually able to connect with friends, family and brands and consumes all types of content from varying internet-enabled devices at any time anywhere.
As well as being heavy users of today’s technology, consumers are also becoming highly discerning about marketing materials. Experian Marketing Services research has shown that 84% of consumers will walk away from a brand that doesn’t listen to them about preferences, while 74% will respond positively to brands that understand them. Importantly, those who valued their experience with a brand will actively recommend that organisation (57%) and will also make additional purchases from them (29%).
This has had a wide ranging impact on all types of marketing, with customers expecting (some would say deserving) a constantly relevant and engaging brand experience. This applies regardless of channel, and is something that marketers need to consider with regard to everything from email through to display advertising. As customers regularly subconsciously swap between channels, brands should recognise these transitions and be able to follow the patterns, providing customers with a seamless brand experience and serving them relevant advertisements and messages.
Display advertising and the always on consumer
For display advertising, data is now key to serving the always on consumer with messages that resonate with them wherever they choose to interact. In 2013 close to 30% of display media was traded ‘programmatically’ and this is likely to increase to over 45% in 2014. This form of advertising is reliant on data to deliver relevant, accurate and targeted messages, and catch the eye of busy, on the move customers.
To make sure that customer centricity is at the heart of display advertising strategy, brands need to feed data into the method from all available sources, whether this is their own first party data, partner sourced second party data or increasingly available third party data. For display advertising, this allows brands to create audiences that fit within a defined criteria and message these groups across the web enabled media arena.
The emergence of three letter acronym technologies – DMP, DSP,SSP, RTB – has enabled this shift in spend but it is data and its effective usage that will sustain the growth this part of the market is seeing.
Improved targeting, happier customers
It is surely some sort of nirvana moment for brands upon realising it is possible to reach their customers with retention or upsell messaging wherever those customers are consuming content on the web. Building out bespoke audience segments not only provides the brand with the opportunity to tightly control the type of message it wants to deliver and to whom, but it also informs bidding strategies. Put simply the brand can decide to spend more on targeting customers who are more likely to be interested in buying products and services, ensuring that media spend is optimised.
This capability extends to acquisition and brand marketing - the data available today means that brands no longer need to show an ad to anyone and everyone visiting a particular site, ensuring that ads appear to only the most relevant of customers. This has the dual benefit of meaning that media budget is spent more effectively, and that customers are only seeing messages that are of interest to them, rather than being served irrelevant adverts.
Detail in the data
Accurate data is a fundamental requirement to enable this type of targeting but this itself can only happen if that data can be linked to the media. The cookies that drive behavioural and retargeting advertising can now be linked safely and compliantly to first party offline customer data and this is beginning to deliver an impact for clients targeting across channels and media. The collection of email addresses and mobile numbers by brands enables linkage to social media and increasingly into video and on demand TV broadcast audiences. As the value of linkage is understood we are now increasingly seeing brands look to device IDs as a means to tie accurate data to their customers.
Whichever means to link data is undertaken, the big win for the brand is that the data they use to reach customers or prospects across channels can be consistent. A common marketing currency can be applied as long as they can link that data to the channels.
By pairing on and offline data, and by achieving a cross-channel understanding of customers, brands can expect to increase engagement, loyalty and purchase frequency, while customers can expect to receive messages that they are more interested in viewing, and that they actively welcome. The future of display advertising is to become part of this mix, with data from across brands and third party providers coming together to progress the technique as a means of reaching customers.
By Colin Grieves, General Manager at Experian Digital Media Services.
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